Dave Lieber is deserving of congratulations for his January 23 article, "Senior Analyzes Latest Allegations Against the President." He has constructed what I believe is the most insightful, informative, and poetically terse article I've read in The Student in a long, long time. He brought valid perspective, accurate reporting, and high quality prose together in a fantastic piece.

As sad as it is, it's refreshing to be able to get through an entire article in The Student without wincing in the pain caused by the egregious and all too frequent grammatical and typographical errors that mar the pages of our school's only weekly paper. In case you haven't noticed such mistakes in the past, there are two perfect examples in the front page article of the last issue. First column, fourth sentence: "Hey man, will you by me a case?" Fourth column, second sentence: "The Rave, which Talyor described as `spectacularly done.'" If you can't find the errors in the above examples, maybe there's a permanent job for you at The Bates Student.

Sincerely,

Ideally, material submitted for consideration is received by 7 p.m. the Wednesday prior to publication, when it is then reviewed by the copy and section editors as well as the editor-in-chief. Often times, due to breaking news stories and the academic obligations of our writers, copy is not available for editing until shortly before the paper goes to press. When copy is late, as it often is, the copy editors (a staff of two) are saddled with the unenviable burden of reading and editing 16 to 24 pages of copy in the early morning hours. I doubt that even Levy, with his fervor for "quality prose," could consistently produce clean copy under such circumstances, much less do so with such a degree of success.

To this end, I invite Levy to join our staff and commit himself to the pursuit of "poetically terse" writing. Though the budget of The Bates Student may not afford him a salary at this time, I am willing to provide Mr. Levy with a share of my pay as a stipend for his efforts. Perhaps Levy will then come to realize that the type of journalistic excellence he expects, as admirable as it may be, is nonetheless difficult to attain.